Nothing Like The Sun Figurative Language

“And in some perfumes there is more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks”, once wrote Shakespeare. Elizabeth Bishop wrote in 1946, “And the pink swim-bladder / like a big peony.” Both of these quotations from two very different poems are doing the same thing, describing the subject in admiration. That is difficult to comprehend, considering the first quote sounds like it was meant to humiliate, and the latter appears to be calling a bladder a flower. Although Shakespeare lived in Elizabethan England, and Bishop lived in the early 20th century in America, they both broke free from the limiting expectations of poetry at their respective era, to the point where their work almost taunted these rules. They did this by making …show more content…
Examples of the specific figurative language utilization in this poem include “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;” (line 2), and “If snow be white, then why her breasts are dun;” (line 3). It cannot go unnoticed that these two comparisons are unconventional because they appear to degrade the mistress about whom the speaker is talking, instead of the typical praise of the mistress, which is the more frequent path a poet takes on a love sonnet. Indeed, the untraditional and seemingly rude comparisons are what makes Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” different than the love sonnets of his time. After reading the examples, one is led to believe that the purpose of this sonnet was to belittle a specific woman. At the end, however, the speaker essentially says that he still loves this mistress, to the point where their love was rare, but the mocking comparisons are essential to developing the theme of this poem, as the flaws that the speaker mocks still make up the mistress that the speaker dearly adores. The theme of this poem is that the person someone loves does not have to be “perfect” for them to still be appealing or charming. To illustrate this point, one of the harshest comparisons of the mistress was “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, / But no such roses see I in her cheeks;” (lines 6-7). Basically, the speaker says that the eyes of his mistress have no life or color, but the speaker still appreciates and treasures that part about the mistress. Therefore, the literary element of figurative language develops the theme of “Sonnet 130” by proving that the ideal love is not necessary, and that perceived flaws can still be